500 000 (some say 700 000) medical documents were put into storage, rather than bring mailed, by a company contracting to the English NHS.

These included test results, some for cancer, and treatment plans that should have been sent to local GPs by a mail handling contractor. The government have admitted that the company was "incompetent". Probably the lowest bidder as well.

This follows the farming out of benefit screening, where a large proportion of those denied benefits have won them back on indepedent appeal. Plus the prisoners and parolees that privately run agencies have "lost", oh, not forgetting the phantom ditto that they have charged fees for. Then there are the privately run prisons that suffer more problems than the state run ones do.

So often these companies are employing less than professionaly trained staff it seems. And all these errors add more and more to the bill that tax payers have to foot.

It often seems that the cost of the errors that these for-profit companies commit exceed whatever savings their employment is supposed to generate. But I bet those at the top of the pyramid, the policy makers, still have bulging pockets.

Here, here, Gloucester. Competent employees are not so isolated and hidden that only a private firm can find and hire them. The persuasion of my illustrious Republican party seems to believe that privatization is the most economical and efficient way to run a country. Crock of Shit I say.